Category: Customer service

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing Spotlight: Mohonk Mountain House (Part 2)

This post continues my interview with Jackie Appeldorn, General Manager of Mohonk Mountain House, a family owned resort and historic property in New Paltz, NY. Mohonk is known for outstanding guest service, and I can personally attest to its warm and welcoming hospitality. My husband and I have enjoyed staying at Mohonk for the past several years and plan to continue our annual visits there.

QSM: Jackie, in our previous interview you described employee involvement in perpetuating a guest service culture. Please share one of your favorite Mohonk stories of employee-customer care.

Jackie: Earlier, I referred to a quarterly publication titled Mohonk Bits that is produced by employees for employees. One of the regular features of the publication singles out an employee who provided exemplary service. (We provide a $50 award to the individual who is singled out in the article.) Rather than repeat the story in my words, I’ll share the entire article from our current issue. It not only provides a wonderful example of one of our employees taking the initiative to “Save the Situation” (one of our 14 Service Steps), it also offers some insight into the way our employees view one another and what we do here. The individual cited here for exemplary service is a Mohonk valet.

About Legendary Service
by Alex Sherwood, Mohonk Director of Recreation

It was a Saturday in late November and I had pulled the MOD [Manager on Duty] card. Prepared with a fresh from the cleaner’s shirt, tie, and awesome staff, I was ready to take on the day. The shift had started smoothly, and the Mohonk operation was up and running like a well-oiled machine. Guests were having a great time, and staff were meeting or exceeding their expectations … then I received the call from Guests Services!

“93, Manager on Duty? Could you please call Guest Services?”

With cat-like reflexes, like all our MODs, I was already dialing the 2015 extension before the radio transmission was complete. What I heard on the other end was a fellow employee putting into motion the action team we have in place to take care of challenging situations, and by the tone of this request a challenge this was going to be.

As I gathered what information I could, I armed myself with the LEARN defense system [“Listen – Empathize – Apologize – Resolve – And Never prove a guest wrong”] and made my way to Guests Services, where I was told the guest needing assistance would be. The background to this point was there were two Fed Ex packages which this guest had shipped out the day prior that had not been delivered to their respective parties. As I arrived to the desk, there stood a guest, who by her body language was easy to identify as the earlier mentioned challenge. Immediately this person turned and, with a small chuckle, remarked: “Looks like you’re the one they sent to take care of this… good luck!”

As soon as this guest had been turned over to me, you could quickly see many others scattering for something else to do, as the guest explained how, upon arrival the day before, she had dropped two Next Day Fed Ex packages at Guest Services to be delivered that morning, and according to her, one of these recipients had called to inform her the package had not arrived. This guest had come to Guest Services to find that both packages were indeed still in our possession. It quickly was apparent that why this happened was of little importance; what we were going to do to fix it was all that mattered.

Through a little further conversation this guest revealed the contents of the first package contained New York Knicks tickets for Saturday’s game which tipped off at 1:05 pm. It was now 12:15 pm, and I was pretty sure I was doomed on this one and prepared myself for the guest’s whipping. As the sense of defeat overwhelmed me, in walked David Kelso from Guest Services, with his hand raised in the air to get my attention.

What follows may be one of the all-time greatest “Save the Situations” ever conceived. Dave pulled me aside and informed me that he had taken it upon himself to open the package, retrieve the two game tickets, place a call to Madison Square Garden’s ticket office, introduce himself, and explain the situation he was trying to resolve. He then faxed copies of the tickets to the ticket office and received confirmation the tickets could now be redeemed by the person who was to receive the tickets in the first place.

Armed with this bit of information I was able to inform the guest that a resolution to the first part of the problem had been found. In disbelief the guest questioned, “How could this be?” I explained to her what David had done and said she could inform her client they could still make the 1:05 tip off. With a phone call, the client was on the way to the game. David’s fast thinking and willingness to create a solution to the problem turned a complete loss around to a positive resolution … which may be talked about for many years to come. It was amazing to have a staff member who was willing to assist in resolving the challenge.

Great job, Dave!

QSM: Thank you, Jackie, for your time in sharing a bit of what makes Mohonk such an exceptional place. I look forward to seeing you and your wonderful staff on my next visit!

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Internal Marketing Spotlight: Mohonk Mountain House (Part 1)

One of my favorite vacation spots is a sprawling castle that sits amid thousands of acres of beautiful land nestled in upstate New York. Mohonk Mountain House is a family owned resort facility that was founded in 1869 by Albert Smiley and is recognized as a National Historic Landmark. In its fourth generation of family leadership, Mohonk maintains “19th century charm” while offering 21st century amenities (including a fabulous spa). Mohonk provides its guests with exceptional service and hospitality and has received numerous industry accolades, including recognition by Conde Nast Traveler’s  Readers’ Choice Awards and Travel + Leisure’s World’s Best Awards.

My husband and I have enjoyed visiting Mohonk as returning guests for several years now, and we continue to be impressed with the its commitment to service excellence and hospitality. After our last visit, I contacted Jacquelyn Appeldorn, Mohonk Mountain House General Manager, and she graciously agreed to a blog interview. Jackie has served in this position for 11 years and oversees a staff of up to 750 full-time and part-time employees. (The total number of employees fluctuates seasonally in this year round operation.)

Part 1 of this interview provides insight into Mohonk’s service culture and how the organization engages employees in maintaining this culture. Part 2 will feature a special follow up.

QSM: Jackie, please tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be at Mohonk Mountain House (MMH).


Jackie: I’ve had two tenures at MMH. While I was in college, I started working in the Mohonk Mountain House dining room for what I then expected would be a summer job. I worked there for a few summers while in college, and then stayed for another 15 years, as I progressed through the organization. I was a vice president when I left to take a position on the faculty in the business department of a nearby community college (teaching had long been my career aspiration), where I remained for 9 years. During this time, I joined the Board of Directors at Mohonk, and then was offered the General Manager position. Although I enjoyed college teaching, the offer represented a unique opportunity, and I still am honored to be here.

QSM: Mohonk has been serving guests for more than 140 years. How do you apply this tradition of service in current times?

Jackie: We have a long tradition of serving guests. When we were designing our Service Program in 2003, we determined we needed to create a Service Statement: a brief but inclusive message that all employees could recite and understand that accurately articulated our vision of service at Mohonk; almost a mission statement for our service program. We spent many hours struggling over what it should say and really needed and wanted it to be perfect.

One day, our archivist presented our Executive Group with a document dated June 19, 1916, and signed AK Smiley (the nephew of the first AK Smiley who founded the resort in 1869). At the top was the phrase “MEMORANDUM IN EFFECT UNTIL FUTHER NOTICE …” In the body of the memo, we found our Service Statement: “The cardinal aim of our business is the comfort and contentment of guests.” Mr. Smiley’s memo provided a blue print for the right way for employees to behave in the workplace and to treat guests, which is just what we intended our Service Program to do. The behaviors addressed in his memo are some of the same behaviors our program addresses almost 90 years later.

QSM: The hospitality industry employs people around the clock. What are the key challenges of engaging staff in a 24/7 operation? And how do you prepare to meet these challenges?

Jackie: The biggest challenge in this regard is communication. I feel all of us spend so much of our time in meetings, and we still don’t convey everything we want our staff to know – and what they want to know — on a timely basis. One element of our Service Program was the introduction of Daily Shift Briefings, a brief activity intended to take place at the start of every employee’s work shift that provides key information about that day’s events, activities to reinforce specific service practices (we have 14 Service Steps and 3 Service Standards) and trivia about Mohonk history.

As our Service Program evolved, we added a quarterly employee publication called Mohonk Bits (initiated and produced by non-managerial employees) and a weekly cafeteria tabletop flyer, known as Tidbits. These publications do more than relay information; they emphasize our traditions and service commitment, highlight successes (individual and organizational), convey historical anecdotes (as a 142- year-old family-owned business, history is important to us) and reinforce our pride in what all of us do at Mohonk.

QSM: Tell us more your Service Program and Service Committee: why it was formed … its purpose … who is involved … what are some typical activities … and its overall impact.

Jackie: Mohonk’s Service Program was the result of a well-planned, thoughtfully considered, comprehensive initiative to change the culture that existed at that time to one that values and exhibits a high standard of service to guests as well as co-workers. Developing and launching the plan took about two years and involved many employees throughout the organization. Once the program was launched, a newly created Service Committee took on organizational responsibility for maintaining and nurturing the service culture.

We all recognize our individual roles in perpetuating our service culture, but this committee is charged with developing and executing activities on a regular basis that provide on-going, consistent reinforcement of good service behavior. Our Training Manager, who works in the HR department, now chairs the committee. Most departments have a representative who volunteered or may have been invited by other committee members to join. Members can rotate off, which exposes a greater number of employees to the function of the committee. The committee is composed of supervisory or management staff, although not senior management, and the occasional hourly employee.

Members meet weekly and plan monthly programs, holiday events, and on-going activities. For example, they create two annual all-employee events. The one in November has evolved into The Parlor Games; past themes have been Jeopardy, professional wrestling, and the Dating Game. These games feature contests involving volunteers and members of the audience that reinforce our Service Steps and Standards. Every May, the committee produces the annual Albert Awards, the Mohonk version of the Oscars, where individual employees receive awards (an Albert statue, cash and prizes) for Best Performance in each of our 14 Service Steps. We award two for each category – one to “front of the house” employees, those that regularly deal with guests; and one to back-of-the-house employees, who work behind the scenes and are more apt to serve co-workers. We run each of these events once in the morning and again in the afternoon to allow employees working both shifts to attend. These two annual events are elaborate productions, much enjoyed and anticipated by the staff.

An example of a monthly service program is Cash Cab. This program reinforces the service step of “Escort Guests to their Destination.” Throughout the month, a member of the Service Committee drives around picking up employees in the parking lot to drive them to the entrance. (The parking lots are a long downhill walk from the entrance.) On the trip, employees have a chance to win prizes by answering questions about Mohonk (reinforcing the Service Step “Be Knowledgeable About House History.”)

Another popular monthly program is when management staff replaces the cafeteria servers at meals. An additional ongoing activity is the awarding of “Summerhouse Tickets” (Mohonk’s logo is a summerhouse). Managers receive tickets each month to award to employees they catch in the act of providing good service. Ticket recipients are entered into a monthly raffle for prizes.

We have 15 people on the Service Committee who perform their regular jobs in addition to the work they do for the Service Committee (unlike academia, we don’t offer release time for work outside of one’s job description). The committee and the individual members are highly regarded. We are very, very fortunate to have such creative, motivated, dedicated and hardworking staff members who are eager to serve on the committee. The programs and activities that they develop, and that we as a company support, do much to create an energized, positive work atmosphere.

QSM: Impressive! Thanks, Jackie, for sharing how Mohonk engages employees in reinforcing its culture of guest service. We look forward to learning more.

Note: Stayed tuned for Part 2 of this interview in which Jackie shares an employee story of service recovery.

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

“The Rock and Roll Guide to Customer Loyalty”

Seriously, it’s an e-book about customer service with a rock & roll twist written by Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru.

I fell in love with The Rock and Roll Guide to Customer Loyalty because it’s a fun read that carries a meaningful message about customer service. As a baby-boomer, I enjoy classic ‘60s music. As an advocate of internal marketing, I also love that Joe gets the value of engaging employees in generating customer loyalty.

Some of the groovy gems from this complimentary e-book (yes, it’s free!) include:

  • “Lip-synching: The rock & roll equivalent of the fake customer service smile.”
  • Concerts = encounters with customers, aka moments of truth wherein “your challenge is to create a memorable moment that makes your customer say, ‘WOW!’”
  • Band = employees who are your internal customers and coworkers. “Customer loyalty begins with internal loyalty. … What are you currently doing to make your workplace one that attracts and retains radically happy and loyal band members?”
  • A standing ovation = appreciation. “Be outrageous in demonstrating your love and appreciation for your customers … [and] internal customers.”

And my favorite quote: “Treating your internal customers like rock stars goes beyond providing red M&M’s and Dom Perignon. But that’s a good start.”

Pass around those M&Ms and champagne, and rock on!

[Note: Special thanks to Phil Gerbyshak for introducing me to Joe.]

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Customer service Engagement

A Love Story about Customer Care & Employee Engagement

In time for Valentine’s Day, here’s a story about a love that is lost and recovered.

It’s quite an extraordinary story because it’s about a business: Zane’s Cycles – a business that’s truly passionate about customer service.

Act 1, some time before Valentine’s Day: A customer wants to surprise her husband with a bike from Zane’s Cycles as a Valentine’s gift. She makes a special request to place the bike in the store window – since she planned to take her husband by the store after a Valentine’s dinner when the store is normally closed. She gives the store balloons and a card to place on the bike for display and invites friends from work to see her husband’s reaction to the gift. However, before closing the store that day, an employee forgets to put the bike in the front window. Uh oh …

Act 2, February 15th: Chris Zane, owner of Zane’s Cycles, gets a voice mail from an extremely upset customer complaining that the store forget to display her husband’s gift as promised and ruined her Valentine’s Day surprise. Chris and his retail manager go into customer service “recovery” mode:

  • They apologize to the woman and deliver the bike to her home. Even though the bike was purchased on layaway and only partially paid for, Zane’s waives the remaining balance.
  • To make up for the disappointing Valentine’s Day, they give the woman and her husband a restaurant gift certificate for another dinner.
  • And to make up for disappointing her friends from work who took the time to witness the Valentine’s Day gift, Zane’s sends a catered lunch to the woman’s workplace.

Even though the situation didn’t turn out as initially expected, the customer is happy with Zane’s response.

Act 3, about a week later: Chris receives a letter of apology from the employee who forget to display the bike. The employee knows how much effort went into this customer’s recovery and includes a check for $400 to help cover the out-of-pocket recovery costs. As an hourly employee, the check represents about a week’s pay.

I love this story, and not just because of Zane’s Cycles’ extraordinary effort to recover from a negative customer service situation. What moved me most when I first heard Chris tell this story is how the employee acknowledged his role and tried to repay the company. It’s an incredible testament to the customer-focused and engaged culture that Chris Zane has built.

Note: Chris did not cash the check; he keeps it as a reminder of employees’ passion for service.

You can hear Chris tell this story in his own words on The CEO Show.

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Customer service Engagement Marketing Training & Development

What Still Matters: Three Years Later

I’ve been so busy traveling the past few weeks, I forgot to celebrate the third anniversary of my book’s release. Taking Care of the People Who Matter Most: A Guide to Employee-Customer Care was published in October 2007, and sales are still going strong – despite the economy and because of it. As companies struggle to hold onto their business in this downturn, employee and customer engagement are more critical than ever.

In the past three years I traveled coast–to-coast to speak with business and nonprofit professionals who want to strengthen this engagement through internal marketing. What surprised me most is that while I met with marketing and human resources staff (as expected), my audiences were also filled with engineers, nonprofit managers, social workers, association executives, healthcare practice managers, municipal administrators, educators, and software consultants. They willingly shared “the good, the bad, and the ugly” of workplace engagement. (Little shocks me anymore … at the same time, I continue to be encouraged to hear what works.)

Looking back over the past three years, here’s what I’ve learned from these diverse audiences:

  1. Engaging employees and customers with internal marketing is intuitive, but not intentional enough – managers need reminders to “take care of employees to take care of customers.”
  2. Even with restructuring/downsizing/hierarchical flattening, too many organizational silos remain – employees continue to feel disconnected and disenfranchised.
  3. Management-by-wandering-around (MBWA) is making a comeback – while this practice isn’t as popular as it used to be, it hasn’t gone out of style.

Employees want and need to feel their work matters. Together with customers, they want to know that they are respected and valued.Why is this so difficult?

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Customer service Engagement Training & Development

Reaching the Breaking Point: A Lesson from JetBlue

Back from my summer blog break, I want to address the recent JetBlue flight attendant incident. For those who may have tuned out while vacationing the week of August 9th, here’s the condensed version: Flight attendant Steve Slater snaps after dealing with uncooperative, unruly passenger; launches into an expletive-laced speech on the plane’s intercom; and then opens and slides down the emergency evacuation chute to head home where he’s later arrested. A rather unique display of “take-this-job-and-shove-it” that generated a media frenzy and had people weighing in: those who hailed the flight attendant as a workplace “hero” for standing up to customer abuse vs. those who faulted him for not doing a better job of maintaining his cool as a customer service professional. (There was another group somewhere in the middle. A friend of mine commented, “He shouldn’t have done it, but damn!, what a hoot that he did.”)

Many factors contribute to customer frustration and rage – economic pressures, customer-unfriendly policies (not limited to the airline industry), poor customer service, even weather – as this summer’s heat wave made people cranky. Employees aren’t immune to these same factors in addition to dealing with demanding customers and/or employers.

How do you cope with workplace stress?
The owner of a small service-based business told me about her experience dealing with difficult customers – sharing what she refers to as her “call of last resort.” A customer called about a service bill he received, complaining the price was too high; this was after the work was completed. The business owner calmly explained that the price was based on the materials and labor involved, and that the customer’s wife had been given an estimate of the work in advance and agreed to it. The customer repeatedly complained about the price and would not listen to the business owner. She finally ended the call by saying, “Sir, your time is valuable; so is mine. We’ve reached the end of this conversation, and there is nothing more to say. Have a good day. Goodbye.” While she says this respectfully and sincerely, she admits it’s satisfying to have the last word.

Customer interactions vary by industry and may call for different responses to difficult situations. But how can they be handled without reaching the breaking point?

Start here
JetBlue’s incident can serve as a springboard to review your organization’s approach to difficult and/or abusive customers. I suggest engaging employees in thoughtful discussions based on the following questions:

  • What IS an acceptable way to handle difficult customers?
  • How can we deal with such customers while preserving our brand’s integrity?
  • What (if any) of our current policies contribute to customer frustration?  What can be changed to minimize this frustration?
  • What are our options when customers become abusive?
  • What coping strategies or healthy ways can employees use to deal with this stress?
  • Does the company have guidelines to help employees with this? If so, do they know what the guidelines are? And do employees have the necessary training and skills to apply them?

This discussion list is not exhaustive; additional questions are most welcome. I also invite you to share your experiences in helping employees deal with difficult customer situations before they exit the emergency chute.

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Customer service Marketing

New Report Outlines Priorities for Service Research

I’ll never forget how frustrated I was in my first MBA marketing course. I was working in bank marketing at the time, and the course focused on consumer packaged goods and industrial products that had little relevance to what I was doing on-the-job. Back then (in the late 1970’s) there was no mention of marketing “intangible” services. Now, fortunately, there are complete textbooks, courses, and even graduate concentrations in services marketing.

As my career evolved, so did the emergence of services marketing as a field of study – one that I eagerly embraced in my professional development. The applied science of services marketing and management has grown tremendously thanks to a strong international academic-practitioner partnership.

So I’m happy to share the latest service research priorities developed by academics and business executives that will drive thought leadership to advance the science and practice of service. Why is this important? Because “all businesses are service businesses.”

Here are the top ten overarching service research priorities compiled by the Center for Services Leadership that spearheaded this important endeavor:

• Fostering service infusion and growth.
• Improving well-being through transformative service.
• Creating and maintaining a service culture.
• Stimulating service innovation.
• Enhancing service design.
• Optimizing service networks and value chains.
• Effectively branding and selling services.
• Enhancing the service experience through co-creation.
• Measuring and optimizing the value of service.
• Leveraging technology to advance service.

While all these research priorities are important, here are the two that I’m most excited about (along with related topics identified for further exploration).

Creating and maintaining a service culture:

1. Recruiting, training, and rewarding associates for a sustained service culture.
2. Developing a service mind-set in product-focused organizations.
3. Creating a learning service organization by harnessing employee and customer knowledge.
4. Keeping a service focus as an organization grows, matures, and changes.
5. Globalizing a service organization’s culture across different countries.

Effectively branding and selling services:

1. Effectively branding service and solutions and identifying ways to assess brand value.
2. Developing consistent brand experiences across touch points.
3. Harnessing social media’s impact on service brands.
4. Achieving effective solution selling and defining the new role of the sales force.
5. Forging closer relationships between employees and the brand.

You can learn more in the Research Priorities for the Science of Service CSL Business Report 2010.

Regardless of which topic(s) appeal to you, the study of these “global, interdisciplinary, and business-relevant research priorities” will help advance the science and practice of service management to the benefit of business and consumers.

 

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Interview with Chip Bell on Internal Customer Service

Chip Bell has been writing about customer service for as long as I can remember. An internationally renowned consultant, speaker and author, he has written several customer service classics, including his latest book, Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers, co-authored with John Patterson. [Note: see my review of his new book.]

I asked Chip to share his expertise and insight on the topic of internal customer service.

QSM: What do you see as the relationship between internal customer service and external customer service?

Chip: The requirement for remarkable external service is exactly the same for internal service. The quality of the service the external customer gets is a match set with the service that is delivered to colleagues internally. Go to the “back of the house” of any Ritz-Carlton hotel and you will observe the exact same service between associates that you will see the front desk clerk deliver to a hotel guest. Internal service reflects the organization’s true commitment to remarkable service.

Service between internal units is sometimes like getting service from a monopoly service provider. If you don’t like the service from your Department of Motor Vehicles, you can’t take your business elsewhere. Likewise, if you get poor service from the HR department as an employee, you often cannot go to another HR department like you might abandon a Sears for a Nordstrom. However, it is important to remember that almost all internal units could be outsourced. Job security does not always come with being the sole source, especially in challenging economic times.

When customers (internal or external) do not have a choice, and get poor service, they often take out their frustration on the front line person. It suggests perhaps an even higher standard from units or organizations that are the only game in town.

QSM: Based on your extensive experience in the field, what would you site as an example of great internal customer service?

Chip: Several exemplars come to mind. Sewell Automotive (Dallas) has been the #1 car seller in the nation across most of their brands—Lexus, Infiniti, Cadillac, GMC, etc. One of their secrets is the terrific partnership between sales and service. Other examples include USAA (San Antonio), the insurance company that caters to the military, retired military and military dependents. Zappos.com and Amazon.com are both best in class as e-tailers for their great handouts and superior internal service.

QSM: Who should be responsible for internal customer service?

Chip: The same people who are responsible for external customer service—everyone! Customer-centric and customer-focused organizations, like the ones already named, make every employee responsible for remarkable service. A service ethic is hardwired into their organizational DNA. I asked a waitress in a Ritz-Carlton hotel restaurant what she liked most about her job. “Working here at the Ritz has made me a better wife and parent,” she said. “The values that we practice at the hotel with each other and with the guests are the values that make all relationships special.”

QSM: What advice do you have for companies struggling with maintaining customer service (both internal and external) in an environment with reduced resources?

Chip: As cash-strapped customers seek service, they expect more and more value for their hard-earned funds. Customers may not always be able to judge the quality of the products they buy or the fairness of the price they have to pay, but they are always gifted at judging the quality of their service experience. It is the front-line that creates that experience.

When companies started making cuts, they should remember to spare the most important variable in their customer’s definition of value. Front-line employees should be respected, heard, trained, empowered, and affirmed for their crucial contribution to the company’s reputation. It is important to remember that employees learn how to serve customers by the way they are served by their leaders.

QSM: Thank you, Chip!

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Customer service

“Take Their Breath Away” New Customer Service Guide

Want to develop devoted customers? There’s a new book out that can help you.

Take Their Breath Away: How Imaginative Service Creates Devoted Customers, by Chip Bell and John R. Patterson, describes twelve strategies and tactics to enhance your service delivery and extend customer loyalty to customer devotion. These strategies – including “Camouflage” (seamlessly inserting magic into the customer experience) … “Decoration” (engaging customers with thematic and sensory embellishments) … “Air” and “Air Defense” (critical reminders that service fundamentals can’t be taken for granted) – are packaged and presented informatively and entertainingly.

In addition to detailed descriptions and examples of each Take Their Breath Away strategy, the authors provide suggestions on how to execute these strategies to maximize competitive advantage. I particularly like their segmentation model of companies with customer service levels ranging from “customer centric” to “customer indifference.” (Too many of us have had the misfortune of dealing with companies on the lower end of this spectrum.)

While Bell and Patterson mention the importance of engaging employees in creating devoted customers (such as instilling a service vision, listening to employees, and recognizing outstanding service providers), I would have liked to have seen more depth on this topic. Nonetheless, this book is a solid guide for new customer service providers; it’s also a great reference that offers new insight for more experienced service providers.

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Customer service Engagement Marketing

Reflections in The Employee Customer Mirror

To describe the impact that employees have on customers, I often use a mirror metaphor. This “employee-customer mirror” reflects the reality that customers are affected by what employees experience on the job. If employees are frustrated by company policy or internal politics, their attitudes can be projected onto dealings with customers. And who wants to be served by disgruntled employees? It takes only one or two such encounters (depending on the customer’s tolerance threshold) before a customer takes his/her business elsewhere. And who knows how many other customers will hear of the experience?

It’s an easy principle to remember: the way employees feel is the way customers will feel – and if our employees don’t feel valued, neither will our customers. Unfortunately, too many organizations take this relationship for granted. (Don’t even think about using current economic conditions as an excuse.)

How do you manage employee-customer care? I’m talking the basics here:

  • open the lines of organizational communications (top-down, bottom-up, and laterally)
  • involve employees in improving the business operations – whatever is needed to survive and thrive
  • provide opportunities for continued learning and professional development
  • recognize employees who continue to rally the energy and enthusiasm to serve customers and co-workers despite limited resources.

What do you see when looking into your organization’s Employee-Customer Mirror?

  • a shiny reflection of employee- and customer-satisfaction?
  • a blurred image that needs polishing to be more employee- and customer-focused? or
  • a cracked image opening up opportunities for your competitors?